Water Cress Gatherers ( (Liber Studiorum, part XIII)

Joseph Mallord William Turner

1819 · Etching only; before first state of three · Drawings and Prints

Turner distilled his ideas about landscape In "Liber Studiorum" (Latin for Book of Studies), a series of seventy prints plus a frontispiece published between 1807 and 1819. To establish the compositions, he made brown watercolor drawings, then etched outlines onto copper plates. Here we see his preliminary work on a plate that Thomas Lupton later completed in mezzotint. The rural English scene shows a woman picking cress in a stream near two children as figures with baskets rest at the end of a bridge, and a horse-drawn gig move away down a road next to a wall.

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner

Date

1819

Medium

Etching only; before first state of three

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

H.O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H.O. Havemeyer, 1929